The World the Railways Made

by Nicholas Faith

  Pay was cut by ten per cent, and Hamblen eventually roused the workers to protest, claiming that while the pay cut ‘would impoverish us greatly, it would not add to the already luxurious living of the stockholders a single case of champagne, or a new suit of liveries for their flunkies’.

  Hamblen and the others were finally admitted to the spacious private office of the president, ‘the highest railroad functionary that any of us had ever seen. We firmly believed his power to be greater than that of any Tzar.’ They found him ‘with an extremely fragrant cigar cocked at an angle forty five towards his left eye.’ He soon disposed of their arguments, claiming that if he met their demands for ‘the exorbitant wages you men have been receiving’ the railroad would be placed in the hands of a receiver ‘and then we should be paid in scrip, which we would have to sell for what anybody chose to give for it’. In the end Hamblen led an, inevitably unsuccessful, strike and he was sacked once more.

  He ends up running his own line … and calling in strike-breakers when the workers want more money. The final touch is his remark, ‘I flatter myself that today our stock compares favourably with the best in the market.’

  * For the best discussion of the whole subject see Jack Simmons’s The Railway in Town and Country 1830–1914.

  * In her novel The Railway Children E. Nesbit employs the director as a deus ex machina saving the children’s father from the unjust prison sentence to which he has been sentenced.

  † The boys of Wellington College, founded at the beginning of the railway age, originally wore German-style officer cadet uniforms. These were rapidly replaced after Lord Derby, the Prime Minister, handed one of them his ticket, mistaking him for a uniformed railway employee.

  * The title of a study by Alfred P. Chandler from which the quotations are taken.

  * In the North George Pullman was the first to employ negro workers in any number, although before the Civil War most of the work on Southern railroads was done by negroes. Some even rose to drive the trains.

  * The American figures became public only in 1888, when it was revealed that over 2,000 railway workers had been killed that year.

  * In 1911 the French government took a leaf out of the Prussian book. They had had enough. Before the strike of that year, over half the men in some grades in the French state railways were on sick leave at any one time. They called up strikers for three weeks’ military training. The next day the trains were running again.

  * Managers gave strikers and non-strikers apparently similar letters saying that the worker ‘had left our service of his own accord’. The paper was watermarked with a crane. If the man was of ‘good character’ then the crane was erect; but if he had been an ‘agitator’ then the crane was broken-necked.

  VIII

  SOCIETY ON THE MOVE

  1

  Social Changes – and Social Relationships

  Railways were not built for the purpose of social change. As a result they do not seem to have been a revolutionary force in social relationships. In most cases they reflected society as it existed and did not often initiate change themselves. Nevertheless they permeated life so thoroughly that only the first generation could remember social behaviour as it had been before the railway revolution. In Mr Facey Romford’s Hounds R. S. Surtees was characteristically cheery about their influence:

  Among the great advantages afforded by railways has been that of opening out the great matrimonial market, whereby people can pick and choose wives all the world over, instead of having to pursue the old Pelion on Ossa or Pig upon Bacon system of always marrying a neighbour’s child. So we now have an amalgamation of countries and counties, and a consequent improvement in society – improvement in wit, improvement in wine, improvement in ‘wittles’*, improvement in everything … each fresh dinner was only a repetition of the last, and people got tired of the same thing over and over again. That is the case in most counties. Railways have gone far to annihilate that sort of society.

  In the same book Surtees went even further, opining that ‘all people are put so much upon a par by the levelling influence of the rail, that a versatile man may pass for almost anybody he likes – a duke, a count, a viscount.’ He was exaggerating, but the artificial, temporary confinement with perfect strangers in a railway compartment was a godsend to novelists anxious to bring characters together.

  The railway carriage was also a boon to fortune-hunters, as witness the famous music-hall song which starts:

  ‘Oh Mr Porter, what shall I do,

  I want to go to Birmingham and they’re taking me to Crewe,

  Send me back to London as quickly as you can

  Oh! Mr Porter what a silly girl I am.’

  The ‘silly girl’ nearly overbalances in her agitation, but was saved by an old boy:

  nearly fainting with the fright I sank into his arms …

  On his clean old shirt front I laid my trembling head

  ‘Do take it easy, rest-a-while’, the dear old chappie said,

  ‘If you make a fuss of me and on me do not frown,

  You shall have my mansion dear, away in London town’

  However railway travel, especially outside one’s own country, could merely narrow the mind, confirm existing prejudices. Travel on foreign railways provided the English, in particular, with a new opportunity to dilate on the general undesirability of foreigners, especially those encountered on long night journeys. According to Martin Page in Lost Pleasures of the Great Trains:

  Lord Russell shared a compartment with a foreigner who ‘proceeded to open his carpet-bag, take out a pair of slippers and untie the laces of his shoes’. ‘If you do that sir’, proclaimed the great Victorian jurist, ‘I shall throw your shoes out of the window’. The foreigner remarked that he had a right to do as he wished in his own country, so long as he did not inconvenience others. Lord Russell demurred. The man took off his shoes, and Lord Russell threw them out of the window.

  Plenty of room for first-class US passengers travelling between New York and Chicago, circa 1890.

  Railways could also reinforce, rather than transform, class structures. In India only the British invariably travelled first class, in their own time and space capsules, their first-class accommodation totally separated from the life of the country, whereas before the railways they had perforce to mingle with the natives on the roads. Among the Indians themselves it was feared that higher castes would be reluctant to share any kind of space with the lower orders, a reluctance which would have impeded the spread of rail travel. Quite the contrary. As the philosopher Herbert Spencer pointed out (in The Quarterly Review 1868), in India ‘when it was seen that the different classes of carriages were not intended, as the natives expected, to accommodate different castes … the Brahmin manifested no reluctance to travel in the cheapest class’. In England, by contrast, ‘the quality travelled first-class to save their caste, and in India they went third-class to save their money, regardless of caste’. But both caste systems, British and Indian, survived intact.

  The class structure of the trains themselves showed the railways as social reflectors, rather than innovators. From the start British and, following them, most Continental European trains were divided into three classes (The Prussians had four, plus a fifth special ‘military’ class). More democratic countries, like the United States, Norway and Switzerland, did not divide their trains so markedly, indeed the democratic Norwegians never had more than one class.

  American trains were different. While European passengers travelled in separate compartments*, in the United States the whole carriage was open, in a deliberate contrast to less democratic European societies. Nominally, at least, the Americans did not have class distinctions although immigrants travelled in huddled masses in cars which, as Robert Louis Stevenson put it, ‘are only remarkable for their extreme plainness, nothing but wood entering into any part of their constitution’ (see note on page 264). Inevitably, too, railways echoed racial distinctions. Railways – and stations –
in the South at least were so organised that the races did not meet on the station or on the train.

  In practice the Americans also divided their coaches into two types, the first-class ‘parlor car’ and the ‘day coach’, which was roughly equivalent to European second class. As R. S. Surtees pointed out in his Hints to Railway Travellers, even Second Class, the equivalent of the ‘outside’ or inferior class, was infinitely better than the inside of the old stage-coaches, supposedly the same as First Class railway travel – although Second Class coaches were originally exposed to the weather and devoid of upholstery*.

  First class passengers naturally travelled on upholstered seats. The Japanese, used to tatami rush matting, found them puzzling†. The rich also travelled as far as possible from the engine, to minimise the risk of dirt, smoke and dust. Little care or expense was wasted on the luckless proles in the third class. Until the 1840s their accommodation consisted of open boxcars attached to freight trains. In 1844 the Railway Times argued that ‘we do not feel disposed to attach too much weight to the argument in favour of third class carriages with seats on a short line. Little physical inconvenience can result from their absence’.

  In Britain Gladstone’s 1844 Regulating Act required even third class coaches to be covered but they still resembled boxcars with roofs rather than true passenger carriages – by then the first class coaches looked like exactly that, coaches on wheels. But even the cheapest seats were expensive by working-class standards. Even the cheap night rate for the first French train between Paris and Le Havre represented the weekly pay of an agricultural labourer. In most of Europe rail travel remained a middle-class prerogative until the very end of the nineteenth century.

  Continental railways retained the true third class until relatively recently, its seats wooden or covered with a mere apology for upholstery. Yet in 1874 the Midland Railway had moved to a two-class system, improving its third class accommodation to the level previously associated with second class, with six people to a compartment, compared with four for first class and eight or ten for third on other lines. This was brilliant marketing ‘based on the realization that the three-class system was uneconomical and that larger returns were to be derived from stimulating than from discouraging third-class travel. Though unconvinced and indignant, the other companies had no alternative but to follow the example set by the Midland … Soon third-class accommodation equalled the old second; soon it was much better’.1

  The distinctions in the atmosphere in the various classes’ social atmosphere was largely imaginary, the supposed frostiness in first class was matched by an equally mythical jollity in third. Perhaps the neatest definition was made by an Englishman ignored by two ladies in a Prussian second-class carriage. According to Martin Page he remarked ‘that in first class, the passengers insult the railway staff, whereas in the third class the railway staff insult the passengers. Now I learn that in second class, the passengers insult each other.’2

  Class divisions extended from the trains into the stations where waiting rooms were separated by class as well as by sex. The waiting rooms played a particularly important role in Continental European stations, where they housed the passengers until a few minutes before a train’s departure. Some early stations even had separate entrances for different classes. In India in the 1980s Paul Theroux noticed some delightful distinctions, including ‘Third-class Exit, Second-class Ladies’ Waiting room, First-class toilet, Sweepers Only.’

  A few great landowners ensured that railways crossing their estates provided them with their own stations. The Duke of Beaufort had his own station at Badminton in Gloucestershire, originally with the right to stop express trains to suit his convenience. Even grander was the Duke of Westminster, who built a three-mile railway, albeit of a mere 15” gauge, to his mansion at Eaton Hall in Cheshire. This was a working railway, required for the vast quantity of goods the hall consumed, including forty tons of coal a week. The Duke of Sutherland, himself a railway fanatic, had helped to finance the railway through the Highlands from Wick to Thurso. In return he was allowed a private station to serve Dunrobin Castle where he kept his private coach.

  For most passengers speed was the greatest luxury. The differences between various passenger services could be considerable. At the end of the nineteenth century the fast night trains between Kiev and Odessa covered the 654 km in just over twelve hours, at an overall average of 33 mph including eleven stops. The daily mixed train for third-class passengers took over 26 hours. Mark Twain cautioned travellers in New Zealand to ensure that they took the twice weekly express between Auckland and Wellington. On any of the five ‘wrong days … you will get a train that can’t overtake its own shadow’.

  The speed of trains, or, more usually, the lack of it, bred many a joke. Man offers guard a child’s ticket. ‘But you’re not a child.’ ‘I was when I boarded this train.’ On the Southwold line in Suffolk the passengers, it was said, would leave the train, pick a few mushrooms, and then rejoin it a few minutes later. (The line was narrow-gauge, with locomotives and coaches originally destined for use in China.)

  The desire for a special style of travel gradually evolved into special, named trains of which the most famous was the Orient Express (see here). Its success spawned numerous imitators, mostly run by the same company, the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Most of these were designed to whisk the affluent from northern capital cities, usually Paris or London, to Mediterranean sunshine and specially-built railway hotels.

  In Europe those in a hurry could charter a special train – Sherlock Holmes was for ever doing so. It was not necessarily the done thing, however – when Winston Churchill hired a special during an election campaign it was cited as typical of his general flashiness. Royalty, needless to say, had its own trains. The first was commissioned by the Dowager Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV. Queen Victoria was not to be outdone by her predecessor’s widow, and other royalty followed her example. In Japan the Emperor owned the country’s first special, built to allow him to celebrate the opening of the line between Kobe and the ancient capital of Kyoto in appropriate style, complete with a traditional flower painting on the panel of the Imperial door.

  The more autocratic the country, the more insecure the monarch, the more outrageously luxurious the ruler’s train. In 1857 the Emperor Napoleon III commissioned a splendid train much envied by his fellow-monarchs. The Tsar went one further. His train was painted the same sky-blue colour used for his gendarmerie’s uniforms. It included:

  George Pulman’s idea of rail travel.

  a sleeping car, a dining car, a kitchen car with an icebox and a wine cellar; and a number of cars for the Imperial entourage … There were fireplaces … In the ante-room the ceiling was padded with white satin, the walls were softened with quilted silk stuffs, the doors had mosaic work as their master feature … A most prominent piece in this car was a combined clock-chandelier of bronze and Sèvres porcelain. In the sleeping car, walls were done in crimson, with a few mirrors and rose-coloured draperies for contrast. On a rich rug stood boudoir chests and chairs of rosewood.’3

  To most monarchs trains were simply a convenient means of travel. But to two successive kings of Bulgaria, Ferdinand and his son Boris, they were a passion. Boris, in particular, gained a reputation for royal eccentricity by his love of train-driving, and there was a minor scandal when his insistence on speed resulted in an inferno which killed a fireman. But Boris had the last laugh: thanks to his informed interest his country’s trains became a byword for efficiency.

  By contrast in the United States luxury was democratised, thanks largely to George Pullman. He did not actually invent the modern sleeping or restaurant cars, but during the 1860s he manufactured and publicised them so effectively that they spread round the world within a decade.

  As Siegfried Giedeon put it in Mechanisation Takes Command, ‘Pullman’s strength was not in mechanical devices: here he availed himself of anything appropriate to his purposes’ – a rival had inv
ented the crucial idea of folding the bed into the wall. ‘His strength lay in quite another sphere, not the technological but the sociological. His invention was luxury in travel,’ but his version of luxury was not confined to royalty or their American equivalents; it could be purchased for a relatively modest supplement on the normal price of a ticket.

  His biggest gamble was the Pioneer, a sleeping car he built in 1865 at four times the cost of any previous vehicle. Pullman, like the Boeing company a hundred years later, assumed that the infrastructure would be improved sufficiently to permit his product to be used. The Boeing 707 required stronger and longer runways, and in Giedeon’s words ‘Pullman’s sleeping car could not be used in normal traffic, as it was too wide for the bridges and fouled the platform roofs. However, things happened as Pullman foresaw: the bridges were widened and the platform roofs were adjusted to the size of car he believed necessary for comfort.’

  Within a few years he had developed a restaurant car to match the sleeping car, and in 1873 his triumph was crowned when he shipped eighteen sleeping cars to Britain. His name soon became synonymous with comfort. In fast Russian trains the saloon cars, says J. N. Westwood, in his History of Russian Railways, ‘were modelled on American parlor cars, with eighteen revolving armchairs, large mirrors and windows, electric lighting, separate toilets for ladies and gentlemen, a smoking room, carpets and wall paper … the railway took even greater pride in its “Pul ‘manovskii’” sleeping cars, with their two-berth compartments, side corridor, hot water in the toilets, and covered gangways between each vehicle.’